


Infinite Realms

by Guardian_Rex



Category: Danny Phantom, The Secret Saturdays, W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Rex/pseuds/Guardian_Rex
Summary: The Heart of Eternity, the Netherworld, has been locked away for a long time.  Ghosts can't crossover to the other side, and either grow too weak to continue, or fall into rest where they are buried.  Now, however, the gateway to the Netherworld is opened, the veil that Infinity placed over it shattered by a single boy, and a universe worth of mystery and danger has been released to the rest of the cosmos.  How will Danny Fenton handle it?





	1. Why it all began

**Author's Note:**

> To those of you remembering the original Infinite Realms thing that is, in fact, down there with my other stories, I apologize but I had better ideas on how to handle everything, and so I've decided to start over. I do hope you enjoy it as much, if not more so than, the first draft.

Danny, a teen with messy dark hair, big blue eyes, and pale skin, sported a huge grin as he mapped out the night sky on a hill in the park.  "I'm pretty sure I can see Alcor from here."  He pointed at a notably dim star in the Big Dipper and turned to his best friend Sam.  "Can you see it?  I know that Tuck can't without his glasses but you've got pretty good eyesight."  Danny was gently shoved to the grass by his original best friend, Tucker.  Danny laughed and tripped Tucker, letting out a small oof when the geek landed on him.

Sam snorted and looked out where Danny had pointed, trying her best to actually spot the thing this time.  Violet eyes narrowed the teen searching for several moments before grinning.  "Yup," she answered finally, kicking the boys to stop their wrestling.  "Hey, dorks, I can see it.  It'd be cooler if you could sketch it out for us Danny.  We'd have a reference point for what Tuck is gonna fail to see past his PDA."

"Hey, with my PDA I can map out the stars digitally and zoom in on the star from the best telescopes in the world."  Tucker waved his latest upgrade around proudly as he spoke, allowing the scrawny shorter teen to crawl over to his lavender backpack.  Sam arched a brow at him and Tucker huffed.  "The governments don't need to know that I'm using them to stargaze, Sam.  I've never been caught and they should let the public have the best viewing experience possible of the painting of the gods."

"That's a long and complicated way of saying 'don't report me to the government.'"  Sam chuckled and Tucker rolled his eyes.  "Don't worry, I'm not gonna go blabbing and get you put in jail for stargazing.  So long as you aren't hurting anyone with that plug into the government."  Tucker sighed in relief and Sam patted his back.  "What kinda best friend would I be if I did that?  I haven't even converted you over to veganism yet."

"Saying 'yet' implies you will eventually succeed," Danny warned, connecting the stars in his doodle of the Big Dipper together.  "You and Tucker sound like cultists when you argue over food.  Actually, you just said convert to veganism, you sound like a cult leader, ready to go to war with one another over what foods you should eat."  Danny stuck his tongue out to the side, his pencil strokes soon filling the night air as much as the bickering Goth and Geek.  Before long, Danny was rummaging through his bag again, this time for blue, yellow and white colored pencils.  "At least neither of you areas crazy as my parents," he mumbled, giving the bear eyes of dark blue.  "I can't believe they thought a portal to the afterlife would actually work."  The chatter died down quickly and Danny looked away from both Ursa Major in the sky and on his page, concerned.  His friends were never quiet.  "You two okay?"

Tucker and Sam were staring at him as though he had lost a limb and regrew a foot in its place.  "A what to where?"  Shit.  Shit shit shit.  "Danny," Sam said slowly.  "What are you talking about?"  Son of a minotaur Sam was giving him the 'talk or be pestered' glare.  "What portal?"

"The one my parents have been working on since before I was born?"  Danny scratched the back of his head and raised a brow at them.  "I'm sure I've told you about this.  They made a prototype in college but it destabilized seconds after activation."  Danny held his hands together and spread them quickly, making a wooshing noise.  "But they kept going, cause it was working for, I think, five seconds?"  He shrugged.  "When Mom and Dad plugged in the big one yesterday, it fizzled out before it even started.  A spark and nothing more."  The image of his parents' disappointed faces left a bad taste in Danny's mouth.  "Which is weird cause we've hit other realities before.  I remember one of them felt like wading through water and my suit was stain free afterward.  Practically brand new."  Danny went back to his doodle of Ursa Major.  Behind her trailed Ursa minor, a smaller lighter shaded version.  "There was another one I remember from earlier this summer, but it was just cold darkness and hard to move structures.  Nothing budged an inch.  I had to be pulled out early cause my suit ripped and my arm started to freeze up."

"You've been to alternate dimensions," Tucker accused, "Without even mentioning it to us?"  The geek swiped the notebook and bopped his buddy on the head with it, cutting off Danny's sputtered response.  "Dude, we coulda been reality hopping with you and your family this whole time?"

"Seriously Danny, that's a whole new level of holding out."  Sam was flipping between anger and excitement, the changes on her face too subtle for anyone new to the ways of Sam to notice.  "Dude, you gotta take us with you. I mean, this is amazing!"

"Yeah!"  Tucker shouted, clearly set firmly on excitement.  "Think of the tech we could find in another dimension!  There's all kinds of things an advanced extra dimensional society could have made that we humans can only imagine!"

"We've yet to encounter any sapient beings, Tuck, let alone any technology.  I'm not sure we'll ever be able to actually find a way into the Netherworld like they want to."  Danny reached out and snatched his notebook out of Tucker's hands.  "I doubt it's real.  Entropy takes the energy generated by your brain, not a clump of 4th dimensional particles that build a replica of your body for you."  Danny flipped to where he had been drawing before and sighed when he saw the skeptical and worried looks on Sam and Tucker's faces.  "What?"

"That's a pretty bleak outlook on death, Danny."  Sam sat next to him and gave the nerd a shove.  "This is coming from a goth, Danny.  Even I don't think it's just 'everything goes black.'"

"You're also a witch, Sam,"  Danny pointed out.  "And didn't you tell me that goths don't glorify death or life, just the pointlessness of it all?"  Danny thought it was counter-intuitive to celebrate pointlessness unless it was the uselessness of the actions on an enemy's side.   _ Whatever, I can't really judge goths for being weird, I guess. _

"Yes, but as a witch, I also happen to appreciate the value of life."  Sam wrapped Danny up in a headlock.  "I also appreciate that one day it'll all be wiped from existence so why not treat what we've got the right way?"  Sam dragged her knuckles against Danny's scalp, prompting him to actually struggle for release.  "It's why I refuse to eat the husks of animals whose lives were taken too soon."

"Not exactly 'too soon' if that's what they were bred and raised in total comfort for."  Tucker yelped when Sam let go of Danny and launched herself at him.  Danny snickered and went back to his drawings, shaking his head.  

_ My friends are the best.  I should do something nice for them. _  Danny pulled out a blank piece of paper, balled it up, and tossed it at the wrestling friends.  “Hey, guys!  We upgraded all our controllers, we’re stargazing tonight, so Sam it’s your turn to pick what we do for tomorrow.”  A reliable enough system that got them through a lot of things to do that summer.

Sam dropped Tucker and tapped her chin with a hum, a sign the boys knew to mean she already had something planned.  “How about you show us this mysterious portal of yours?  Your house is like, a reverse skyscraper right?  There’s gotta be plenty for us to see down there.”

Danny’s expression froze on his face.   _ No one is allowed in the lab but a Fenton without Mom and Dad’s express permission.  This will take some really big puppy eyes, a far enough destination, and me convincing them to actually go on a date with each other to get over the portal. _  “Eh… doable, but I can’t say it’ll be doable  _ tomorrow _ exactly.”

“Sure dude,” Tucker shrugged, tackling Sam to the ground.  “Just tell us wh-AH!”  Sam reminded Tucker that his victories were short lived and Danny laughed.

_ Death may be dark but life is good. _


	2. Opening the Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Local Teen Somewhat Dies in Lab Accident! Netherworld freed! Scientist Parents Angry and Worried!

"And this," Danny gestured grandly at the chrome covered area in general. "Is the FentonWorks Laboratory. This is where my parents - and me and Jazz if we get permission - come down to make our amazing inventions. Mainly the Gravity Inverters™, but I don't know if the general public is ready for that yet." he shrugged. "I just know that once I have my license for a motorcycle, I'm going to make a hovercycle."

" _ We're _ making a hovercycle," Tucker emphasized, a grin tugging at his lips as the geek's wandering gaze refocused on his best friend. "Don't think I'm not gettin on that bad boy once it's done. Then we can ride to school in style!" He walked over to a table near the door where he saw blueprints for some vehicle. "You started building a rocket and didn't tell me?"

"What? Dad's making a rocket?" Danny ran over and snatched up the blueprints, looking them over. "Nah, that's not a spaceship but with a few modifications…"

"I hate to interrupt attack of the Geeks," Sam snorted, pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "But are you gonna tell us about that giant hole in the wall Danny?" The goth pointed her thumb in the direction of a gaping hole, ringed by an octagonal metal frame. Cables linked it to a control panel on it's right, which led to a large computer with three monitors pressed against the wall. "I mean, that's a real eye catcher, don't you think?"

"I guess," he shrugged, tone as dry as he could get it. "But I mean, it's not like you can't find holes in the walls of nature… or downtown, really. Giant wall holes aren't special." Sam rolled her eyes with a grin and Tucker snickered as the raven haired boy walked over to the metallic tunnel and waved at it. "What makes  _ this _ hole in a wall so special, you ask?" His voice, a bit high from the changes of puberty, dropped to a dramatic pitch.

"Yes," Sam indulged, holding back her laughter better than her meat loving friend. "I do ask. What is so amazing, o great Fentini?" Danny snorted, breaking character for a moment, and the vegan grinned wider.

"This hole in the wall is special because it was put here by world-renowned scientists, Jack and Maddie Fenton~" he drew out his last name with a grin as he gestured to the control panel. "It's meant to open a gateway between worlds, allowing us to prove to the world that alternate dimensions exist! What's on the other side of the portal? Elves? Hideous alien monsters? Omnicidal robots?"

Tucker raised his hand, pointing to the exposed hole. "Oh, I believe it's concrete and darkness. Possibly some circuitry and plumbing?" His friends gave the geek a flat stare and he shrugged. "Sorry man, it looks like it's not exactly… working?"

"That's because it's still a work in progress Tuck, just like I told you in the park," the young scientist let out a sigh and turned to peer into the darkness, as though it would provide all of the answers to the universe if he stared at it hard enough. "I wonder what's wrong with it, though. Mom and Dad checked, double checked, and quadruple checked, and this spot is where the world should intersect with another. I've even read over their notes; it's all theoretically sound."

Sam raised a skeptical brow, though her friend didn't see it immediately. "They let you look over their notes?" The faux innocence painted on the face he showed her was answer enough. "I thought not, you sneaky snake."

"Am I Apophis, Jörmungandr, or some other special serpent?" When the goth playfully smacked his arm, he stuck out his tongue with a grin.

"So, what went wrong in the practical phase of this portal?" Tucker sat in one of the two swivel chairs before the computer and stared at the screen. "What would they use as passwords?"

"Flowery Judgement," Danny answered, moving to pull the geek away from the controls. "And I don't think you should be rooting around in their files. I'm not exactly allowed down here, or in their notes for the portal or anything big like that. We're lucky Jazz hasn't come down to bust us." Tucker sighed and stood, shoulders drooping. "And we're not sure what the practical error is. Like I said, all the science checks out logically, so it should work."

"Maybe it's a mechanical error?" Sam pulled out her old camera, the one her Nana got her for her fourteenth birthday just last month and snapped a photo. "Why don't you go in and check genius junior? You're pretty smart, and you've read the notes."

Blue eyes widened at the thought - one that had been running through his head since his parents announced that the portal wasn't operational - and he turned to look at the portal. "That's crazy Sam; I don't have a hazmat suit on or anything to go into the potentially hazardous gateway to another world."

"Aren't they here?" Tucker opened a large locker on the left side of the portal pressed against the wall. "Where they've always been? I remember you saying that your old one tore earlier this summer, and I doubt that your parents wouldn’t make you a new one by now."

"And if you manage to fix it before your parents get home, imagine how proud they'll be." Sam knew that unlike her, the approval of his parents meant a lot to Danny. And he was her best friend, one of the people she'd happily walk into a fire with. That's why, when she saw him open his mouth with protest in his eyes, she cut him off with a sigh. "Just ten minutes? Then, we can get to the Dumpty Humpty concert and pretend we were never down here."

"You'll actually let it go?" The youngest Fenton held a deal of skepticism in his tone, but he had every right to be. Sam was stubborn in getting what she wanted and was more likely to drag a hundred pound weight around than let something go. "If I take just ten minutes to go in and see if there're any problems in the wiring or whatever that I can fix, you'll let it drop, and we can go to the concert?" She nodded, and he held out his hand. "You have a deal, my Gryffindor friend."

"Agreed, Hufflefluff," the Goth grinned and shook his hand, moving forward to snap more pictures while he changed into his jumpsuit.

Unfortunately, it seemed his dad had made this one, since it didn’t fit well over any clothes other than his boxers.  As such, Danny removed his Dumpty Humpty shirt, jeans, and sneakers.  On came the white suit, nylon belt, safety boots, and extra thick, black rubber gloves.

Turning to the portal he walked inward, reaching for the flashlight attached to his belt a couple of steps in when he realized the light from the lab didn't quite reach in and discovered a raised panel. He tripped, stumbling forward, and reached out with his left hand to catch himself. When he heard a click and a high pitch whirring, Danny cursed his ambidextrousness. The circuits within the machine lit up with acidic green light, blinding him for a moment. He turned in the next to try and run out of the tunnel, but the agony hit him.

Danny found himself in too much pain to do much else than scream.  Electricity and green light charred his skin, boiling his blood, melting his organs, reducing his bones to ash, lighting his brain on fire. But he was in pain on more than a physical level, though he didn't know that. He didn't know that even his very soul was on fire in that moment, wreathed in the radiation of a world that he was never meant to touch. His scream was one that reached the ears of his friends, his sister two floors up, the neighbors next door, the residents of the other world: in the burning light of the event horizon, all could hear the scream of the boy who was eaten by lightning and swallowed by the river Styx.

Finally,  _ finally _ , he could make his muscles respond. He was able to make himself move. Every molecule felt as though it were led, but he staggered forward, and when he fell, Danny landed on chrome tiles. The last thing he heard was the sound of Sam and Tucker calling out his name, and then he accepted the sweet embrace of unconsciousness with open arms.

* * *

 

Jazz ran down the stairs two and three at a time, dialing her parents at the same time with no regard for how dangerous that was.  “Mom, Dad, I heard a scream from the lab!  It sounded like Danny!”  She landed on the tile platform just as a flash of whitelight faded and let out a gasping scream when she saw her baby brother in his friends’ arms.  “DANNY!  He’s hurt, come home quickly!”  She ran over and pulled her baby brother away from the two of them and winced.  “He’s got steam and smoke coming off of him, it smells like burnt nitrile rubber and- the portal!  It’s on and Danny’s barely breathing!”

“What happened to my son?!”  Jack bellowed as his wife repeated their daughter’s words in panic.  The tires screeched as he made a U turn - traffic laws be damned - and sped back towards their home while Maddie dialed 911.  “Hold in there Danny boy, papa’s comin!”  As he peeled down the road, the image of their SUV blurred before shifting to something else.  The mirror showed what the vehicle would become once their modifications were done, and many would question if such a vehicle were even legal.

The other mirrors in the room shifted and blurred between pasts, presents and futures before the being observing them.  The blue skinned spirit wore a purple tunic, gray gloves, and a violet cloak. Upon their arms were six different watches, from their black belt hung a pocket watch, and in their chest was the face and pendulum of a grandfather clock. Each timepiece kept the time of a different world, ticking on at various times but all in sync. Blank red eyes peered up into the variety of giant mirrors lining the walls of their observation room, tail swaying in rhythm with the heartbeat of Giestael.

They watched the paths of the boy and his friends intertwine with that of six girls, each a force to be reckoned with in their own right.  Mature yet dramatic, intelligent yet passionate, wise yet effervescent, light-hearted yet forceful, determined yet insecure, powerful yet naive.  Clockwork saw confrontations, friendships, and battles in the future for them all.  Yet that was the most they could determine out of the possibilities.

Were it not for a certain fool attempting to play Switzerland, several threats that brought upon the need for these girls could have been circumvented.  “Well,”  Clockwork sighed as they turned from their mirrors and floated down the corridors of their Citadel.  “I’ll simply have to make him see reason.  Time Out.”  As they entered a room marked with a clock, Clockwork mentally braced themselves for the company of the other Time Keepers.

A room made of every shade of blue - pulsing, swirling, shifting around - held few objects. A simply-designed table of mixed green and pink wood separated by blue dominated the area.  Twelve chairs surrounded it, seats for twelve entities, some of whom slowly began to appear from the ether.  

An olive-skinned man, inhumanly perfect body toga-clad, whose eyes were pits of darkness and decay.  A skeleton with cracks in its skull that led both up and down to its eyes dressed in a black jacket and surrounded by skeletal hands.  A four hundred pound infant with a dual triangle on the center of its brow.  A seemingly normal human wearing a lab coat, pulling out a gold pocket watch to check the time.  A woman with dark, white, brown hair and three eyes who sat with her back straight and fiddled with strings of light.      A lion with fur several shades of brown and a mane that was lit up with fire and smoke. As each appeared, Clockwork took their place and waited.  The last to arrive was a man with a bald head, a white goatee, and C-shaped symbols on his temples.

“Now that everyone is here,” Clockwork said into the silence, garnering everyone’s attention from their chatter.  “There is a matter I wish to discuss before certain actions are taken that might disrupt the time stream.”

“Is this about the boy, Clockwork?”  The infant asked, voice deep due to size.  “He has caused quite a bit of trouble over all of the time streams, and it makes me wonder why you protect him.”

“Perhaps because you feel responsible for the future that you impose upon him time after time?”  Kronos, the patricidal bastard, sneered at the spirit.  Why did they allow his continued existence?  “After all, you must have some form of conscious under all of that enigmacy nibling?”  Clockwork silently commended their uncle for using such a new word.  They’d have to give him a cookie later.

“I protect him,” Clockwork started slowly, gripping their staff tightly to remain calm.  “Because not only is he my responsibility, but also the path of least resistance towards a brighter future.”

“Or, a devastating one.”  A soft and light voice carried across the table, and ruby eyes focused on the robed young man directly across from them.  “With the veil over Giestael torn down by young Daniel’s actions, the dangers of the Netherworld are now loosed upon the universe!  Surely such a crime cannot go unpunished!”  Pale blue eyes were narrowed in rarely seen anger, and Clockwork felt the same emotion flare up in their core.

“A crime that should not go unpunished, Himerish, is your own.”  Clockwork pointed their staff at the Oracle of Kandrakar with a snarl.  “You could have helped us, could have sent the Guardians that you had at the time to aid in the war against Pariah, but instead of helping or allowing other worlds to do so, you sealed off my world!”  Some of the other timekeepers saw where this conversation was headed and promptly left the room.  Even Scaevola, who could not reform his molecules anywhere else in the Realms for another thousand years.

“It is the duty of Kandrakar to maintain the peace of the worlds and push back threats,” Himerish argued, hands pressed against the line on his part of the table.  “Geisteal warranted a major threat to the cosmos and had to be quarantined!  Is it not the role of Infinity to keep Eternity in check, Prometheus?”

Clockwork’s eyes widened, and green fire burned across their form with their fury.  They had not held that name for eons and t weren’t about to take it again.  “Just as it is the role of Eternity to do the same to Infinity!”  They slammed their staff down on the river of time that flowed around them all, images of destruction and carnage playing out before the eyes of the Council.  “We were cut off from the entire universe because of you!  We had to fight a millennia-long war that would have taken no more than a decade with proper allies.  Countless lives and afterlives were lost because of you!  I lost my ability to affect the Realms and thus, regulate your activity when you cut me off.”

“Unlike Geisteal, Kandrakar has shown no need for outside regulation, Prometheus.”  Himerish let out a breath of offense before attempting to regain his composure.  It was evident by the swirls of pink that ebbed from his body that it was superficial at best.  “I have allowed the course of Time to flow as it will, without interruption or interference.  Unlike you, I do not meddle where I do not need to.  If the universe so wills something to happen, then it will happen.”

“Such reliance upon Destiny is a sign of naivete,” Paradox, the human professor, pointed out with a look of irritation.  “You have the power to change things for the better, yet you would allow disaster after disaster to occur in the name of allowing Time to run its course?”

“Time knows no morals or differences such as better or worse, Paradox.”  A woman with curls as dark as night accused.  “To interfere as you do is a disruption in how things ought to be.  Though, in this, the Titan’s desire lies.  Oracle, your request to punish the boy would be interfering with an event that has happened over nearly all of the timelines.”

“The boy’s action creates a breach in an essential barrier against threats the cosmos has not seen in thousands of years, Hemsut.”  The robed man let out a sigh and shook his head.  “It is my job to protect the Infinite Realms.”

“Your words now contradict each other, Himerish.”  The triclops tutted in her three voices and held up a thread of light to examine with one eye.  “You wish not to interfere with the timeline, yet you wish to act against Destiny for the sake of your secondary job?  You show inequity in this situation of a morally neutral concept.”

“Time itself knows no scruples, and yet we who have the paramount to change its furtherance and alter the causatum of history do, Norn.”  The skeleton - no, revenant - pointed out, half of his seven hands gesturing as he spoke.  “If we do not recondition things for the better, then why should we wield such power in the first place?”

“And who is to say that which is better?"  A two-headed male pointed out.  "So long as the world itself continues, the fate of the inhabitants is not the concern of Time."

"And if the residents capable of dying who live in those dimensions and timelines can lead better, fuller happier lives, fewer of them pose any threat and those that do present far lesser dangers and potential cataclysms to their world and the neighboring ones that tend to get into a tizzy when such dangers are presented," the grey-eyed professor argued.  "Without life for the world to hold, it shall crumble from imbalance and lack of purpose and die."

"This council exists to eliminate such threats," the triclops reminded.  "To avoid doomsday."

"And so we must achieve that intent through carcinogenic extort alone?"  Blue and orange eyes flared up like neon lights in the darkest of pits.  "We should allow Destiny to onset people into veers where they can only lash out in hopes of a better future, and then destroy them when they try to make things fit in an erroneous way?  Can we not hinder them from experiencing such horrors, or at least usher them to better ways afterward?"

"If we were to interfere in such a way, we would be acting as though we were the ones in charge of the universe," Himerish stated, eyes cold as he stared ahead.  Directly at Clockwork.  "We are the protectors, vanguards, and sentinels of the Realms, not its gods."

"And as is protectors," Clockwork bit back, crimson gaze full of ire.  "We should strive to keep atrocities from happening.  If you had acted with wisdom or compassion, the afterlives of innumerable beings would have been saved, the souls of my people spared, and my home planet would not be a scattered field of one hundred and forty-five asteroids."

"And what would you have prevented that I supposedly allowed to happen, Prometheus?  Who would you have saved?"

"I would have prevented the Death of Cassidy."  The council was silent.  Only the ticking of various time pieces chipped away at the suffocating quiet.  "I would have helped that poor little boy with the issue of his depression and mutism; I would have addressed the poison within Narissa's heart, I would have done a great many things to ease the weight of your folly, your arrogance, and your laziness."

"I have no need for your advice, nor your reprimand, Prometheus."  The hiss that escaped Himerish's lips was a sound of such rage that the other timekeepers knew not the Oracle was capable of.  He opened his mouth to continue but was cut off by the sound of a heartbeat.  No, the sound of two.

Two rhythms pulsated through the space that was time and permeated the very being of all the gathered entities.  Two spheres -one a star of pink, the other one of Emerald - appeared over the center of the table, and a body formed around the two.  What seemed to be a ten-year-old human child at a glance solidified atop the table and stood with his hands on his hips.  Where one would expect white, there was green.  Floating within those pools of green were circles of magenta.  The boy was covered in markings of every conceivable language, and each glowed various colors - many beyond the eyes of mortals.  He glared down at the two quarreling Timekeepers, disapproval written clearly across his face.  "Honestly, you two."  The being's voice held deceptive youth, but with a wave, the energies of life and death that rolled off Himerish and Clockwork ceased.

"Clockwork and those on their side; calm your shit, things happen and sometimes you just gotta deal with the consequences.  Sometimes your power will not be enough to prevent a cataclysm.  Himerish and those on his side; fuck you, because you are in fact able to do something about the problems of others and just don't want to.  Don't hide behind the intricacies and delicacies of Time to mask the fact that you simply don't want to do the Thing."  There were nods all around the table before this being turned his attention entirely to the Oracle.  "And Himerish?  Veiling Geisteal was a dick move.  Not only that, but it did, in fact, go against the balancing act that you and Clockwork are meant to be doing.  This is one of your crimes, and I shall not see you enacting justice upon those who fall under Clockwork's jurisdiction until said person falls under yours as well.  Danny shall continue as Clockwork so deems fit, and if they decide to be a dick about the kid's future, that's entirely up to them, not you."

"Yes, Lord Goliath."  If there was one authority that got the final say, it was the Guardian of the Balance.  Himerish's pride as the Oracle would not interfere with his wisdom of heeding Goliath's word.  "I shall act as you have declared."

"Good.  And Clocky?"  Goliath turned to grin at Clockwork.  "When you get the chance, dance a little dance with the kid, will ya?"

“As you so wish, lord Goliath,” Clockwork said with a nod.  They turned to the rest of the council, most of whom appeared once Goliath had.  “Daniel shall live his life out as he will.  He shall not be punished for granting freedom to a dying world, and all else… well, only Time will tell.”

* * *

 

While she checked over her brother's vital signs as best as she could, Jasmine Fenton unleashed the full verbal fury of a sister enraged upon his friends. "How could you all do something like this? The lab is off limits to everyone without mom and dad's permission for a reason! Going into the portal like that was a dumb idea and as brash as Danny is, I know he wouldn't go in without a push from one of you, so how the hell could you not bring yourselves to think 'a lab full of experimental equipment and potentially hazardous chemicals, that unfinished humungous project in the wall is probably the deadliest thing here!" She yanked off his hazmat suit, exposing flesh that was scorched with raw red, zigzag lines. Lichtenberg scars littered his body. It was incredible that he was even breathing, if barely. "He could have died! You all could have died! The house could have exploded if something was done wrong, are you all insane or just fucking stupid?!"

Sam and Tucker both took the verbal abuse with heads hung in shame and eyes full of fear. Tucker was shaking, and Sam was paler than a sheet of paper. Danny was so still, they both feared that if they were to blink too many times the tiny rise and fall of his chest would stop and he'd simply die. That scream… it was a sound that would haunt them for the rest of their lives; there was no doubt in that.

Jack and Maddie arrived on the scene in mere minutes, uncaring of the speed laws that Jack had broken to get them there in time. 

"Danny!"  They cried out at once, moving to his body faster than Sam or Tucker could track.  "My baby boy, what have you done to him?"  Maddie glared at her son's friends - if they could still be called that - and reminded herself that assaulting minors would get her in jail and away from her kids.  "How dare you even come down here without getting our permission?  This is a closed off area, restricted from any eyes but our own unless we say otherwise!  Look at what you did to my baby boy!"  She cradled Danny in her arms and stood with him.  He felt cold and limp in her embrace, no tension in his body at all like there was when he slept.  Even unconscious, Danny would curl up as soon as something touched him.

"If our boy doesn't make it, then you two better get your best-damned lawyers because we'll press charges until you're punished for this to the fullest extent of the law."  Jack roared at the two, his size being a particularly intimidating factor that neither ever considered before. If I knew this would happen, I'd have set up a lock that keeps you both out of our house!"

"Jack, we need to get Danny to the hospital immediately!"  Maddie bolted for the stairs, followed by her giant of a husband.

The horror on their faces, the thunder in their voices - it nearly made the teens cry. Tucker could feel tears welling up in his eyes as his best friend was carried out of the lab and up to the SUV. Jazz sat in the back, holding onto Danny, and making sure that he didn't get hurt on their way to the hospital. Sam began to follow after them on foot - Tucker followed and passed her to her great surprise. He hated hospitals, feared them with a passion great enough to burn a forest down. It didn't matter, not when Danny could die because of them. He had to be there for him. They both had to be there for him. There was no other way.

* * *

 

_ The darkness of unconsciousness did not give him true rest. He floated in a void, where he could hear nothing. The silence didn't last long, howling winds that bit through his flesh and seeped into his bones. Opening his frost covered eyes, Danny looked out and saw a tall figure dressed in black and white in the distance. A blink and the figure was a mere two feet away from him. Black eyes that glittered like frozen tar, near hidden by bangs that hung just above them, the river of ebony locks flowing behind the sturdy man's back down to where his elbows rested. Deep violet wings spread out from his back and blocked out the void behind the man, who towered over Danny.  The teen needed to look up just to meet his eyes. _

_ "So," an oily voice spilled from the man's lips, echoing in the empty space that Danny assumed to be either the afterlife or his head. "You are the child that she gave life to, eh?" The boy opened his mouth - to scream in terror, make a quip, or answer  _ with  _ a question he didn't know - but found that he couldn't speak. Not a sound would come from his own mouth. "Worry not, boy," the man tried to reassure him, an icy cold hand resting on his shoulder. "I will not harm you, and here you are safe, for now." _

_ Looking into the other's pitch black shirt, he saw faces shifting and moving in the fabric, and could hear muted screams coming from the man's white jacket. This did little to inspire trust or safety in him. "You should count yourself lucky, boy." Blue eyes rose up to meet those orbs of void once more. "Not many are allowed to visit me in this place without being truly and permanently dead. You, however, have been given a gift from the Spirit Mother. As such, I'll tell you about the world that you opened a path to." The man's left wing folded onto his back, and Danny was granted the sight of a sea of green. "First of all, unlike you humans, I am aware of the Name of my world. Careful not to tell too many people this name, though, alright?" Not seeing much of a choice, the boy nodded as he was pulled along through the void of emerald energy that arced and swirled like flares of a star. _

_ "This world, which those who have moved in have begun to call the Ghost Zone, is actually named Geistael." Guy- _ stee _ -all? That definitely rolled off the tongue. "I'm not the one who chose the name, She is. She being the world herself, of course." _

* * *

 

Jazz, Jack, Maddie, Tucker and Sam all sat in the uncomfortable chairs in the hospital lobby, waiting to hear about Danny's condition. Sam's heart was heavy with guilt, having been the one who pressured him into entering the machine.  _ How could I have been so stupid? _ She berated herself internally.  _ Danny didn't really want to go into the damn machine; he wanted to just show us the lab and go to the concert! Why did I push him to go in?  _ Her face had never been in such a dark scowl, even when she tried to get mad at her parents or seem as depressing as possible.  If her eyes could be trusted, her mouth sure as hell couldn't, then Sam was sure that she had even seen Danny’s ghost.

Tucker had his eyes closed and was doing his best to focus not on the hospital around him. He focused on Danny, and how the younger teen needed his support. Sure, he never really believed in stuff like that, higher powers or intelligences that decided the goings on of the universe. But if it helped Danny… if it helped Danny, Tuck would pray to every god under the sun and over it. Danny had been his friend since they were seven years old and they had spent every moment together, sharing everything that they could. He wouldn't allow his best friend - his brother - to go through something like this while he sat at home trying to forget everything just because he was in a place of medicine.

Jazz was split between worry and fury. How could she allow something like this to happen on her watch? She should have gone down and made sure they went to the concert not go down to the lab and get Danny hurt! She had been reading a psychology textbook in her room when all of the electronics flickered and some sort of pressure washed over the room from the ground up, leaving a cold static to tingle her skin. She hadn't even a moment to wonder what happened before she heard her brother's screams.

Jack held a frown as deep as the Marianas trench on his face, hand clasped around his wife's smaller, shaking one to give support and to get it. Something inside the machine must have gone wrong, something must have been miswired, something must have delayed the start up. Something he had done wrong may nearly have cost his son his life. How does one live with that kind of weight on their soul?

Maddie's foot wouldn't stop tapping, nor would the fingers of the hand that wasn't holding onto Jack for dear life. Every fiber of her being was telling her to lash out, attack whatever it was that was hurting her baby boy so that he could wake up and be safe and in her arms again. She wanted to tear into something, wanted to hold her Danny close and never let him go. She wanted to disassemble the lab and set it ablaze, go back and undo the mistake of creating the portal so that Danny would never have been hurt like this.

Tucker perked up from his slump, back ramrod straight as his eyes opened, flecks of yellow dotting the peridot orbs. He felt something, some spark that left ghost static rolling over his skin and raised goosebumps under his warm sweater. "Danny's ok." Before the words left his mouth and drew the attention of everyone gathered, he felt the spark again. It was almost like a pulse. A slow, weak pulse but it was there. "I don't know how I know, but I do."

Jazz and Maddie opened their mouths, about to tell Tucker off for spouting nonsense at a time like this, but a man in blue-green scrubs left the doors that they weren't permitted to go behind and called out Danny's name. "Fenton J Daniel? Is the family of Fenton J Daniel present?" Jack rose to his full seven feet and nodded to the man. The nurse offered the grim giant a tight smile. "If you and your family could please come with me?" Tucker and Sam got up at the same time that Maddie and Jazz did. No one protested as of yet, and all five of them followed the nurse behind the doors.

After a seemingly endless hallway, they found themselves in a room where Danny lay in a bed hooked up to various machines, a man with short black hair standing over the boy with a clipboard in hand and a frown on his face. He looked up and ushered the group in, even though they had already piled into the room. "Ah, Drs. Fenton, I'm not sure what to think here. Your son… his body temperature has dropped to 49 degrees Fahrenheit, and his pulse is currently 38 beats per minute. For all intents and purposes, I'm sorry," he paused, moving back so that Jack and Maddie could get closer to their boy. "But… he should be dead. I'm not sure how he's stable with these results, but I doubt he'll last much longer in this condition." The doctor gave them his best apologetic look, reaching up to place a hand on Jack's shoulder. "You may want to say your goodbyes now, in case he doesn't wake up." Maddie began to shake, and Jazz moved closer to her father as tears began to fall from her eyes.

"Cold as ice…" Jack muttered, having taken his glove off to feel Danny's forehead. There was far too little heat in his body. "He's pale as paper too."

"Danny, baby..." Maddie rested her head on his chest, next to his heart, "Fight it. Don't leave us yet…"

* * *

 

" _ Well then," the man said, waving a hand at the hospital room - and Danny's unconscious body. "It appears we've been gone longer than I thought we had. Time gets wonky like that for me, ya know?" He shrugged, and found the unamused expression on his young passenger's face rather amusing. "Well, I'll let you get back to your family. Remember: good and evil are questions of perspective, go easy on your friends when they fuck up and lemme tell ya this." He leaned in close, the stocky build of the apparent grim reaper expanding to block out the sight of everything else. "Your parents won't hurt you, but they can't know  _ **_everything._ ** _  Revelation has a price - you just happened to have paid a pretty big one in advance and got this lesson." _

_ Danny really wasn't sure he had absorbed all that much information. There were so many things about the rivers and ruined planet to take in that he was worried it would all slip from his memory. "Oh don't worry about that, this is all pretty deep in your subconscious," the reaper assured. "You'll have it all right up there to remember - when the time comes for you to know that you have any memories. For now, though, you should really get back into your body before you fall into a coma." _

_ Before Danny could question how he would be getting back to his body, his vision was overtaken by white and the last of Thanupsin that he heard was, "It's been a damn long time… welcome back." _

* * *

 

The doctor had left, and the room was filled with a tense silence as the five of them looked at the unusual patient. No one knew just what to say, for fear of throwing oil on burning bridges instead of water. Just as Sam opened her mouth to apologize for it all, there was a sharp intake of breath. Everyone's eyes widened as Danny began coughing, Jazz rubbing his back as soon as he moved to sit up. When he was able to breathe properly again, his leaden eyelids slowly opened up, a sluggish arm being pulled over his face to block out most of the light. Before he could even slur a question of where he was, the raven haired teen was pulled into a bone crushing embrace, the lights blocked out by traffic cone orange. Another pair of arms, slender like his own, wrapped around him from behind.

It was incredibly tiring to move much at all, so Danny instead relaxed into the hold of his parents with a shaky breath, his eyes growing misty. "I've never been so relieved to have by ribs squeezed to cracking point," he croaked out, unsettled by the quiet, slow beeping of his heart monitor, and his family's uneven breathing. Warm tears fell into his hair and down his cheeks, and Danny felt another weight join in on the group hug.

When the Fentons were able to pull themselves away from Danny to let him breathe, Tucker and Sam pounced on the opportunity and hugged the life out of him themselves. "Wow," he rasped, swallowing a bit to try and moisten his sandy throat. "All it takes to get a goth to hug you is a near death experience." Sam let out a choked laugh and Tucker shook with giggles, and for a moment, they could pretend that everything was perfectly ok.

That was until Jack and Jazz cleared their throats, and Maddie leveled a glare that could inspire a lioness on the trio of teens. "Now that Danny's awake," she began slowly, taking a breath to calm herself a bit. "Daniel James Fenton, what in the name of Tartarus were you thinking?! The laboratory is off-limits because it is dangerous to be in it! I have told you fifty-seven times not to go down there without your father or me, and you brought your friends with you?" Sam and Tucker stood at attention, Sam focusing on the point between Maddie's eyebrows while Tucker kept his eyes on the heart monitor. Danny stiffened and realized that every inch of his body felt as if he had run a marathon in a volcano, on the sun.  "You are never stepping foot in the lab again!  If we can move the portal without disrupting the field, the entirety of the lab itself is going to be moved out of the house so that this has no chance of happening again."

"What?"  Danny's eyes widened almost comically, and his jaw met his bed.  "But all of the things I've helped make in the lab-"

"Danny," Maddie placed her hands on his shoulder's firmly, fearing that any lighter grip would lead to him fading away.  "You nearly died," her voice shook, and the raven haired boy found himself in shock.  His mother was always steady and firm in anything she did, from speaking to cooking to hugging to sparring.  Maddie Fenton did not falter.  "We almost lost you... I almost lost my baby..." Mom didn't falter, and Mom had never cried in front of him before.

"Three weeks," Jack said, his voice booming to the point that Danny idly wondered if neighboring patients would complain. "You will be going three weeks with no cell phone, no Tv, no internet and no comic books. Once you get home, there will be nothing but bed rest and studying, you understand?"

Danny nodded soberly, realizing that he had fucked up majorly. "Yes, sir."

"When we get you home," Maddie muttered when she pulled herself together, "we'll have to run a few tests that they aren't equipped to run here at the hospital.  We don't know what exactly the portal has done to you.  Rest for now, but once you get home, we need to check up on you."

"I'll build a suit," Jack said, the gears turning in his head like the turbines of an engine.  "One that can circumvent the ectoplasmic radiation and convert it into far less harmful electrical energy.  That way, it'll filter out any harmful radiation..."  He wouldn't lose his boy to anything.  Not this portal incident, not to the spear-armed metal people, and not to ectoplasmic radiation.

"Sam, Tucker, I'm telling your parents about this." Both teens let out sounds of disagreement, but Jazz glared and ignored them. "You should be grateful that we aren't pressing charges for manslaughter or something. We don't know what this did to Danny besides burning lightning scars into his skin and causing him agony. This isn't something that's going to just go away because he's awake, and you have to deal with the consequences."

"Who do-" Sam started but was cut off by a less croaky Danny.

"Can I have a glass of water? And a moment with Sam and Tuck before you have them shipped away to their rooms for the rest of eternity?" The scientists sighed and relented, allowing the friends a bit of time to talk. They were relieved to have their Danny still with them after all.

After another long hug, Maddie nodded, and Jazz found the strength to turn herself away from her brother's bed.  "We'll be right outside, and you've got ten minutes of private time.  I don't want you to burn up what little energy you have talking."

"I won't, I promise."  A pat on his head, a kiss on the cheek, and his mom and dad were out the door.  There was only one set of footsteps after that, though, which said that Jazz was getting his water.  "So, looks like we aren't going to the concert." This earned him a snort of amusement from Tucker and an eye roll from Sam. "Oh well, opening a portal to the afterlife is cooler anyways."

"Wait what?" It truly amazed Danny when his contrastive friends managed to speak in perfect unison. Sam managed to find her voice first, and she placed her hands on the bed, leaning forward to make sure she was hearing him right. "Did you just say that portal was to the afterlife?"

The resting teen cracked a grin, reveling in the shock on Sam's face. "What exactly did you think my parents research the most? They're ghost hunters but in a more scientifically interested way. I told you this, right?"

"No," Tucker waved his arms comically in exasperation. "You never told us that your folks were trying to open a doorway to the Land of the Dead! That's so…" he waved his hands around as though he could physically grasp the right words. "So cool! First, they discover gravitons and make the technology to use them, and now they've proven life after death?"

"That's pretty revolutionary, Danny," Sam bumped her knuckles against his arm. "And you're the one who opened it up!"  Danny grinned at her, and she stopped, turning to look at Tucker.  The technogeek met her gaze.  "Actually... Danny, something weird happened right after you came out of the portal."

"Well, yeah, I didn't die."  Danny tried to shrug off the weight of that statement, but it hung in the air like a chunk of led.

Tucker shook his head, a hand on Danny's shoulder.  "No, man.  I think... I think we saw your ghost for a second, and then there was a blinding light, and then you were you again."

"Your suit was reversed in color, and your hair was bleached white," Sam elaborated when Danny looked skeptical.  "Your eyes were green too!  Not like Tuck's eyes, but this toxic glowing kind like they put in the movies for toxic waste.  You had blue skin too."

"Plus you were like, a foot off the ground when you came out of the portal, dude," Tuck added on, further contributing to Danny's eyes widening to the size of the moon.  "When you fell onto your face there was this light halo that turned you back to normal.  Think we might have actually seen your ghost?"

Danny stared at the space between his friends instead of either of them, needing to digest this.  He had been different coming out of the portal?  He didn't feel all that different besides being tired as Tartarus.  He wasn't even all that fatigued if one were to ask.  But then, shouldn't I be?  Danny looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers.  "I feel a little heavier than before but other than that I feel just like I did going into the portal."  Sam opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by Jazz's voice.

"You feel heavier because there are bedsheets on you, lightweight."  She placed the small blue plastic cup in front of his face, bendy straw pointed towards his mouth.  "Don't even think of moving too much.  Just drink, little brother.  You shouldn't have the energy to talk as much as you have been."  Danny couldn't say no to the concern in his sister's voice, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to make her worry more with the information that his friends just gave him, so he decided to just go with it and drink from the straw.

Sam stared at the window and chewed on her lip. Even with Danny trying to keep up a light mood, there was still awkwardness in the air, and she knew at least one source of it. "Danny, I… I'm sorry. For pressuring you into going into the portal, I mean." The boy in question turned his eyes to her but didn't stop in his quest to drain all the water from the cup in one go without breathing. "You warned us that it was dangerous and that we should just go to the concert but I thought that you'd be able to find the problem, and then we'd tell your parents, and they'd congratulate you, not- I didn't expect-"

"Sam," Danny interrupted with something between a sigh and a groan. "I won't pretend I'm not upset that you got me stuck in these itchy hospital sheets and cold gown, but you did get me to complete a project my parents have been working on for like, twenty years." He flashed her a grin. "Don't beat yourself up too much about it. It's in the past, and we can't change that."

"That is a lot fairer than I would have given you credit for, little brother." Jazz ruffled Danny's mess of black hair and shot the goth a nasty look. "And more fair than I'm feeling at the moment."

"That's cause I'm the bigger person here, right Tuck?" the siblings looked over at the geek, who was currently staring at the wall next to the door, hand resting on the EKG machine. His eyes were glassy, and if he didn't know better, Danny would have said his eyes had changed colors a bit. But that was ridiculous because Tucker refused to put in contacts and now was hardly the time to try it. "Tuck?"

"Huh?" the nerd blinked, and the glassy film vanished from his eyes, which flicked over to his best friends and Jazz. "Was that a serious question? Of course, you are Danny, after me of course." He laughed as the others protested, shaking off what he thought he saw. It wasn't possible after all.

After around ten minutes of talking, Danny started yawning, and Sam and Tucker were shooed away by Jazz, much to the youngest Fenton's protesting. Jack and Maddie came in and watched over him as he fell asleep, talking idly about the success of the portal and plans on testing whether or not they could move it.  


	3. Dreams, Portals, and Hospitals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Area Teen not sure how much of a joke Dead Inside is Anymore, Area Couple Dream of dead Children, Area Teen Rebels Against Nature

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lookit I'm back! I'm working now on another chapter, and I swear this one is actually rather improved from the first draft. For now, I really hope you enjoy this chapter.

Danny sailed through the endless emerald sky.  A lavender castle in the distance stole his attention from the field of blue grass and green flowers. Towering spires climbed to the heavens; massive, ornate doors gleamed in the setting indigo sunlight; flying buttresses and endless balconies with pointed arches. Below him, children played on the ground and in the air as the adults called out to them to come in.

Danny weaved through the trees, startling the forest life. Birds with wings the size of his arm joined him, dark feathers gleaming as though slicked with oil.

The teen ascended, joyful laughter echoing across the land. This world that carried the dead of other lands, she was more alive than any other!  Something shot from the harmless wildflowers, ensnaring him. Bright red vines pulled him down, causing panic to shoot through the young spirit's mind. "No!" Danny struggled and cried out, hoping that someone would come to help him. "Let me go, you overgrown weeds!" He felt an icy chill as the creepers became coils of metal. "No, no!"

The world fell to darkness and he fell with it.  Fell from the heavens, dropped from the world, plummeted through the vanishing earth into the abyss. A searing light burned away his form in layers until only his soul remained and-

 

He saw only darkness, thick and suffocating, weighing down his limbs and no matter how much he thrashed there was only darkness and constraint and an irritating beeping next to him. Then a dimmed light flickered into existence over his head, and the sheet was removed, allowing him to breathe properly.  Someone in blue clothing spoke, he couldn't make out anything past the thudding beat of his heart in his eardrums. After a few moments of breathing, Danny tried to focus on the man. "Are you ok, Danny?" the boy let took another shaky breath before nodding.

"Y-yeah, I'm good. Just a dream gone bad, I guess." He let out a yawn and stretched his arms, not wanting to fall back asleep too soon. "What time is it?"

"About five A.M." The nurse answered, checking over the boy's chart and raising a brow as Danny swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "Whoa there, tiger. Where do ya think you're goin?"

"Just wanted to stretch my legs," He glanced at the nurse's name tag, "Jacob. That's not a problem, I hope." For once, he wasn't sarcastic. Though some strange calm had settled over him, Danny was still scared for his health.

Jacob stared at him.   "If you can stand up and walk forward ten steps then I'll allow it.  Otherwise, you stay in bed." Danny glared, and Jacob grinned. It was a challenge, and no teenager could turn down a challenge.  "And no cheating by taking super short steps either." Jacob didn't expect him to be able to make it past three steps.

The teen tried carefully, standing slowly.  The first step was wobbly, but the next ones were surer.  After ten he couldn't advance, and Danny turned to Jacob. "Um, I don't think I can go any further with this pulling on me, and I promise to keep a thermometer in my mouth if you unhook me."

Jacob's brows shot up. "I'm not supposed to do this," he began. But then the kid pulled out the puppy dog eyes.  His lip curled in a pout, and he even slumped like a child told that Santa wasn't real. "You're good, kid. I'll give ya that."  Danny fought off a grin. "I don't have the authorization to unhook anything, though. You'll have to stretch those legs in here."  The pout became genuine.

"May I have a screwdriver?  Flat head if yes." Jacob quirked a brow at Danny, who shrugged at the man.  "What? I'm a teenager. We're practically all hyperactive puppies who can't sit still for longer than five minutes."

Jacob rolled his eyes and picked up a remote.  "Most teenagers watch TV when bored. I promise, a day in here and you'll be hooked on novellas." He put Danny in bed.  Danny pouted, Jacob chuckled.  _ Odd… coulda swore his eyes were blue. _

Danny snorted and kicked off his blankets.  "No thank you. Do you get the sci-fi channel here?"

"Wouldn't know," Jacob shrugged, "You'll have to suffer resting up and getting better."  Danny covered his eyes. He groaned but grinned. "Feel better, tiger."

Jacob left.  Danny turned on the tv.  He found the sci-fi channel.  Nothing good was on. The teen stood and looked out the window. The sun was already almost entirely above the horizon and painted the sky in golds and pinks. "Just another day or so and I can go home.  At least then I can focus on word problems involving space." After all, his parents couldn't have been cruel enough to give him math work that didn't involve the sky. "I hope they slept ok." Danny sighed and looked down.  Buses ran even now. Cars left the parking lot. Some entered.

Danny returned to his bed.  He looked at the Tv. His mind was elsewhere.  Something pressed against him. His head, chest, limbs, everywhere.  "'m probably just tired still. Being sick sucks." He closed his eyes.  After a few seconds, they opened and he sat up. “I shouldn’t be so ready to go back to sleep after that weird ass nightmare.”  He pinched his nose and shook his head. “I should be scared right now, shouldn’t I? Breaking down into tears or something? Praying to Astraeus that I get to see the next dawn?”  Glancing at his heart monitor, the beeps having faded into white noise by now, and frowned at the slow yet steady pace of his heart. It wasn’t as fast as most heart beats were, and that was a bit alarming.  “I’ll eat some more bananas, get some extra potassium… that’s probably it. Potassium deficiency.” Laying back down, Danny muttered quietly, “Nott, don’t take me yet…” Danny closed his eyes and tried to ignore how insincere that request sounded.  Sleep claimed him swiftly.

* * *

 

Jack and Maddie had tossed and turned in their bed, unable to find any real rest.  Images of Danny burnt to a crisp, or in a casket or his tombstone plagued their dreams just as sleep nearly caught them in its grip.  Finally, red-eyed and dazed the pair decided to head downstairs to the lab, maybe get some work in. They had met Jazz at the top of the stairs, black bags beneath her eyes, pouring over a psychology book.  "Jazz, honey... that big brain of yours is probably going over way too many things." Jack gave his princess a hug and lead her down the stairs. "Somethin to do will get your mind off of things. It's what we're gonna do."

"Let's head into the garage and see if we can hunt down some cardboard boxes, dear."  Maddie kissed Jazz's head, and the teen nodded.

"I'm guessing you plan on moving the lab as soon as possible?"

"Maybe even sooner than that," Maddie nodded and pointed a thumb in the direction of the back door.  "Now head on out and get hunting for boxes. Jack, you head down and see if you can sort out some of the things to pack up first."  Jazz and Jack nodded, Maddie leading her daughter to the back while Jack moved into the kitchen.

His hand stretched out to flick on the lights when he paused.  The large man looked around in puzzlement. The lights were off, and it was damn near midnight.  He shouldn't have been able to see so well, and the lights weren't powered by the makeshift ectoplasm he and Mads made last year.  The light was coming from the lab door. Opening it, Jack walked down the steps, eyes slowly widening.

 

Maddie and Jazz picked up stacks of folded down boxes and headed back into the house when they heard the cry of an excited Fenton.  "Mads, come quick! It works!" The Fenton women looked at each other for a moment before Maddie set down her stack of boxes.

"Get these into the living room, sweetie."  With that ordered, the Fenton Matriarch headed into the living room, then down the stairs and gasped.  On the other side of the lab, in front of her husband, was a swirling vortex of every shade of green Maddie had seen in her life.  She walked up to Jack and leaned against him slightly. "Jack... Jack the portal! It's operational!" She leaned up and planted a kiss on the corner of Jack's lips, which turned into a quick but love filled kiss.  When they split apart, the scientists ran to the computer and control console respectively and dove into their work.

 

"I'm not sure what he did, Mads," Jack called in his half shout of a voice over his shoulder, "But Danny got the portal to work! It's stable, no ectoplasmic flares like with the protoportal." He stepped back from the control panel next to the portal and toward the computer Maddie was situated at, combing through the data from the chemical sensors inside the portal. He placed a hand on her shoulder, beaming with a radiance that matched the light of the swirling vortex of ectoplasm.  For once, she thought nothing about the horror that their son had gone through. "We finally have a way to the other side. Just imagine, we can go in and see proof of ghosts for everyone to see, discover more than any supernatural hunter ever has, and possibly even harvest the energy to produce clean power for the world!"

"First we have to confirm that it's as stable as the other ones were," Maddie reminded him gently.  Her giant of a man nodded and strode over to one of the filing cabinets. "Still, I have to admit it.  The thought of seeing my father again is an uplifting one." Jack pulled out a bright green yo-yo made especially for him with the Ghostbusters logo on the sides.  "Once we get the lab moved we can send in a probe to scan the atmosphere for any form of life supporting elements." Even with time to think about it, she was resolute in the decision to move all of this out of easy reach of the kids.  Maddie wouldn't lose her babies the way she lost her father.

Jack walked up to the portal and with an expert flick of his wrist, he sent the yo-yo through the event horizon.  After ten seconds, he pulled it back fully intact. "Passage through portal confirmed possible for inorganic matter," he spoke into a microphone attached to the inside of his hazmat suit.  "Probe to be used at a later date." He stripped off his jumpsuit and zipped up a new one, having been the one most exposed to the radiation of the portal while Maddie was doing the same simply out of habit. They had established their personal protocol for whenever they worked with the chemicals in the lab; change out into something else before leaving it.

Maddie got dressed.  Her smile faded with thought.  The portal's usefulness paled in comparison to the price paid to get it working.  She disconnected the power. Nothing happened. Maddie sat at the computer. Going through data, she frowned.  "Jack, come here. I think the portal is keeping itself open."

"No portal has ever been self-sustaining, though."  Jack rushed over and stared at the screen. Disconnecting a few more power cables, he scratched his head in fascination.  "This is new. Guess this means we can move it along with the rest of the lab." They'd have to make sure that Danny and Jazz were out of the house when they started transferring the portal.  "It'll have to go last, though. Jazz is going to be helping us get the rest of this stuff out."

"Sealing the blast doors now."  Maddie hit the keys on the console, and the black and yellow tungsten titanium doors slid shut with a hiss that Danny had approved of when he first heard it.  "Now, we'll go check on Danny, and when we get back, we can start packing up the lab." She pecked Jack's cheek and headed up the stairs while he finished dressing.  

When she reached the door to the kitchen, the boxes were set up and organized by size.  Over in the livingroom, Jazz lay on the couch. In her arms was a folded up piece of cardboard, rising and falling with her sleeping breaths.

Maddie walked over and gently pried the would be box from Jazz's hold, pressing a kiss to the sleeping ginger's brow.  Jack crept swiftly up the stairs while Maddie placed a pillow under Jazz's head. The salt and pepper haired man draped a pink blanket over their daughter and sighed.  The parents locked eyes. After a silent conversation, Jack moved to the kitchen and began cooking up some breakfast for everyone. Maddie ascended the stairs and started typing up something to keep Danny's mind busy when the hospital bored him out of his mind.

* * *

 

When Danny woke, he shivered.  A glance around. Sunlight poured into his room.  He grabbed at his blanket, blinking when he found it underneath him.  “So, sleepwalking? Did I make my bed and then lay on it?” With a slow, careful stretch Danny let his feet hit the yellow and pink tiles.  The cold had him nearly pulling them back up, but he stood up slowly and let out a yawn.

Walking over to the window, he glanced down at the road and saw it was busier than a beehive.  Cars flew down the road in either direction so quickly, Danny strained his eyes to try and keep track of any of them.  After a bit, he began to make a small game of it. Hearing the sound of thunderous footsteps, he dove under the blankets as quickly as he dared.  Knowing that his parents would likely scold him for not staying in bed all night, he closed his eyes just as the door handle clicked from turning and wondered how he could have possibly heard that over the TV.  

“... hasn’t had any vomiting attacks from what we’ve seen and the dosimeter and survey meter haven’t picked up any known forms of radiation.  There is something odd about his blood cells, however.” That was his doctor, something Solace. He was talking about Danny’s test results. Shouldn’t the patient be informed at the same time as his parents?  “There were some of his cell that held .001 percent nickel.”

Usually, it’s best to simply allow your doctor to continue talking when he’s revealing your odd symptoms - or at least Danny assumed it was odd to have any amount of nickel or copper in your blood - but Fentons weren’t all that normal.

Ignoring the increased beeping next to him, Danny sat up slowly, taking only a bit of humor in from the look on his father’s face and the gasp that his sister gave, before turning to look the doctor directly in the eye.  “I promise, I'll stop swallowing nickels.” His heart monitor went silent for a moment before his sister cracked. The slightest upward curve of her lips and Danny filled the room with high laughter that caused even him to cringe.  He and Tucker shouldn't have looked up the effects of various things on the human body when they were seven.

“Danny, you can’t pretend to be asleep when hooked up to a heart monitor,” Jazz pointed out with that ghost of a smile still present, if only to give her brother a bit of morale.  “We can tell the difference between your resting pulse and your active pulse.”

“Why,” Danny quirked a brow at his sister, leaning forward onto his knuckles, “do you know this difference, spazz?  I can’t think of a single good reason for you to know this.” The elder Fentons and his pediatrician shook their heads at the exchange but smiled all the same.  Danny’s smile turned into a frown, and his eyes swiveled to the face of the doctor - Jason Solace, his name tag said. “So, shouldn’t I not have been able to laugh that hard if I have nickel poisoning?”

“That’s true, though we can’t say for sure that you have nickel poisoning, as there was a rather small amount of it in your blood.  According to the hematologist, the traces of nickel seemed to vanish overnight.” The doctor seemed less than pleased about that information, but Danny wasn’t sure why.  His Mom and Dad also looked particularly grave about that, and Danny feared he may have forgotten something his mom had told him during one of her lessons to him and Jazz about chemical reactions.  “In appearance, you’ve just got a small amount of it in your bloodstream, and it should filter out soon enough. I’d like another sample to check over if that’s ok with you.” Here, Dr. Solace looked over to Danny’s parents.  “But you can take Danny home as soon as this afternoon if things check out.”

“Another test wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?”  Maddie muttered, glancing up to Jack. “We want to be sure that nothing wrong goes on with Danny.”  Nickel was one of the few recognizable elements on the periodic table they could identify in the ectoplasm sample from the protoportal.  Other things could have lead to some nickel being in Danny’s system, but he was caught in the opening of an ectoplasmic gateway.

“As long as Maddie is ok with it, I say it’s fine.”  Jack placed a hand on Maddie’s shoulder and offered a tight smile.  He was thinking the same thing as Maddie about the nickel. The last time anyone had been exposed to ectoplasmic radiation on that scale, he had been considered a biohazard only the doctors were allowed to see.  And that had been Jack’s fault as well for not checking over what was being put in the machine. “I’m sure Danny will be okay, though.”

“No,” Danny objected.  “I’ll die of boredom by the time that I can get out of here.  They won’t even give me a simple flathead screwdriver.” Danny fell back onto his bed, letting his body bounce ever so slightly.  “It’s not like I’ll do anything bad with it, either.”

“Son, ya can’t take apart hospital equipment,” Danny looked up at his father incredulously to see a light dusting of red on the man’s face.  “I know from experience that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to try and do that while you’re healing up. The remote, though…”

Maddie shook her head and placed a hand on Dr. Solace’s shoulder.  “Please do not allow either of these two near a screwdriver while Danny is here.  It’s for your own good and our insurance.” Both of her boys deflated, and the Fenton mother let out a sigh.  These two.

Despite the odd conversation, Dr. Solace didn’t show himself to be all that confused.  “It’s perfectly understandable, Dr. Fenton. A child of such exceptional intelligence would grow bored pretty quick without familiar stimulation.  Maybe some math problems would help with that? What’s the size of the Enterprise?”

“642.5 meters long, 195.26 meters high, and the beam is 463.73 meters.”  The doctor stared at him, and Danny shrugged. “That was easy, try again.”

“Um, what kind of crystals-” The doctor didn’t even get to finish asking before Danny shot out the answer.

“Most will be powered by the kaiburr crystals mined on Jedah, but there are several kinds of crystals that can produce the controlled plasma weapon.”  Danny rolled his eyes and laid back. “That, again, is an easy question. I am a nerd, we do not forget these kinds of facts, my good sir. Also, I agree about the blood test, cause I wanna be prepared in case I’ll need an inhaler in the future.”  The doctor stifled a laugh and shook his head. This kid was something else.

“I’ll be back in a short while to get another blood sample, but for now I think I’ll stop delaying your family bonding time.”  The doctor left, and for a moment, the room was silent.

Jazz sat on Danny’s bed, leaned in real close, and frowned.  “What happened to your eyes?” Before he could ask what she meant, Jazz pulled a small mirror out of her pocket and held it up for him to see.  Their parents came closer as he inspected his own face. There were scars, though he had known that already. A quick trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night confirmed that.  It also included nurse Jacob coming in and reminding Danny not to disconnect his heart monitor for anything. Besides the itchy scars, the only irregularity in Danny’s face was hard to see.  Then, he realized what she meant. “Your eyes are teal instead of blue.”

“Aquamarine, excuse you,” Danny shot a quick quip before refocusing on his eyes.  “Ah, but you know nothing of true art, how could you tell?” He closed the makeup mirror and handed it back to his sister while his mother framed his face in her hands, twisting it this way and that.  “So am I going to start shooting lasers from my eyes? That would be pretty awesome.”

“Danny,” Maddie said slowly, attempting to get his attention.  “This is serious. Your blood tests and the circumstances suggest you might be suffering from ectoplasmic radiation poisoning.”

“Except he’s not showing any of the symptoms that the only other known case showed.”  Jack lifted Danny’s arm and examined it for any welts or blemishes. All he could see was lightning tracing the raven teen’s veins.  “He survived it, but after two years in some hospital that we weren’t allowed to visit him in. They didn’t even let us know where he was when we asked about him…”

“Vlad contacted us one day and told us that he was alright,” Maddie continued, seeing that Danny would probably panic if she didn’t at least keep his mind from jumping to the more gruesome conclusions.  “He sounded bitter, though, and he hasn’t said anything about wanting to see us ever again.” The thought of something like what happened to Vlad happening to her son felt like a knife straight to Maddie’s heart.  “The only evidence that you’ve been exposed to the radiation appears to be your scars and your eyes. Ectoplasm is green, so until your system expels the contaminant, your eyes may turn green.”

“Your eyes will match your glow in the dark ceiling stars, Danno.  You’ll want a bucket in case you start blowing chunks of ecto goop, but I’m sure the doc has something here in your room just for that.”

“What if I start crying ectoplasm?”  Danny saw the way his family stiffened and could practically feel his brain hitting the gas.  “That’d look awesome! I’ll have to draw that at some point.” Danny fell back onto his bed and shrugged.  “If only I had my sketchpad with me.”

“You’re taking this far too lightly, young man,” Maddie started in a stern voice.  She drew Danny into a hug and noted how stiff he was. Every muscle she could feel in her embrace was tensed like a spring.  “Danny, you need to get as much rest as possible and eat all of the food that they give you.”

Danny let out what was probably meant to sound like a laugh.  “C’mon, mom, the food here is terrible! There’s no taste to it at all, it’s nothing like what Dad makes.”  His mother pulled back and arched a brow at him. “...or what you make. And you cook far better than any hospital cafeteria ever could.”  A hand - Jazz’s - rubbed circles into his back, and Danny tried to relax his muscles. But how do you relax your anything when someone tells you that you’ve been poisoned by radiation?  He wished he could take his words back when he had complained about his parents’ melancholy. He wished that he could take back his agreement with Sam. All he wanted was for this problem to disappear.

His body was cold as ice, the monitor flat-lined, and the itchiness of his blankets and hospital gown slipped away.  Even the pull of gravity faded, the bed and the floor suddenly a foot away from him. “Danny!” Everyone shouted his name at once, but he could barely hear them over his own screaming.  He flailed in the air and reached out for something, anything that would stop him from floating through the ceiling. His hands curled around the metal rack for the privacy curtain, but his fingers went  _ through  _ the rack.

His brain gibbered with panic after that. Thoughts going numb. Fear flaring wildly. Animalistic. The thud of the ceiling was welcoming solid ground.  Dad jumped up and grabbed onto Danny’s arms, hoping to pull the significantly smaller boy down to the ground with him. Danny’s hand may have stayed solid now, but he was somehow holding up his dad’s weight - something that almost nobody could do.  When Danny paused for breath, his throat having been stuffed with sandpaper, he could finally make out what was being said. “Danny, I need you to concentrate! Remember how this kind of thing works in all of those comic books?” He didn’t, at the moment.  Everything was a bit too blurred with panic. “Son, remember Spider-man! Ya gotta focus! I’ll catch you!”

Maddie and Jazz were standing on the bed of the youngest member of the family, reaching up to grab onto his legs and torso.  Said young man was currently pressed against the ceiling, with his father holding onto his arms to try and weigh him down. Danny also happened to be missing some parts of him from the visible spectrum; his legs, chest, and part of his head appeared to simply be gone.  Upon seeing this, the young Fenton screamed even louder than he had been before - quite the feat since the doctor and nurse could hear the screaming from down the hall.

Before any questions could be verbalized, such as  _ What the hell is going on? _  Gravity took notice of Danny’s situation, was offended by his contrary behavior, and gripped him firmly.  Jack only fell about three feet and managed to bend his knees in time to save them, while Danny landed roughly in his father’s arms.  The boy shook, and the room was quiet as the door opened and the doctor and nurse came in to investigate what had happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, Comments and thoughts?


	4. doctors' tests, lucky spells, and deathly dreams

A panic attack.  That’s what they played it off as, Danny had simply had a panic attack when trying to lighten the mood by showing off his scars.  It wasn’t a hard sell, given that Danny had put on his gown so quickly after Jack jumped in front of him. Once he was calmed down, Danny nodded and shook his head through the questions that the medics asked and hadn’t even noticed when Dr. Solace had taken his blood sample.  When the doctor and nurse left, Danny found himself patting all over his body, eyes searching every inch to make sure he was still all there.

“Is this a side effect of ectoplasmic contamination in living beings?”  Jazz was the first to ask, since no one else seemed ready to say anything.  “The ghostly properties? If I remember correctly, ectoplasm allows for graviton manipulation, right?”  Danny’s gaze snapped up to his sister, who was looking at their parents for some sign that their brains had rebooted and returned to present day.

Maddie was the first one to come back to her senses and check over Danny herself, pulling the red lensed goggles from her hood out of her purse to look him over with.  “Baby,” she said in her most soothing tone, “I need you to hold still while I do a quick scan of your body for any abnormal graviton activity.” Danny nodded stiffly and spread himself out so that his mother could do her scans.  Jack was soon right next to her, his hood pulled down and his goggles doing much the same. “Jack, are you seeing this? Gravity isn’t affecting him half as much as it used to. Danny, baby, do you feel any lighter?”

Looking down at his hand, Danny slowly shook his head.  “I feel… heavy. Like there’s something weighing down on me from everywhere at once that shouldn’t be.”  It took him a moment to realize it, but Danny was very clearly seeing _through_ his hand.  “Mom… mom I can see through my hand.  I can - it’s there, I know it’s there, I can see it there but I can see the veins and the bones and-”

“Shh, close your eyes sweetie.”  Maddie was beaten to the punch of wrapping Danny up in a tight embrace but she joined in a second later.  “Don’t think about that, ok? You’re here on planet Earth, three planets away from the Sun. You’re in the hospital room with me and dad and Jazz.”  Danny’s breathing, picking up with his stream of endless words, slowed down as he returned the embrace and held tight onto Maddie’s hand. “Ok?”

Danny gulped down a breath, seeing that his hand was there again, whole and opaque.  “Ok… Ok, I’m good now. I … did this happen to the other guy? Did uh, Vlad start acting like our food when you leave samples of artificial ectoplasm in the fridge?”  He still couldn’t eat turkey without feeling sick and all the blame went to his dad.

“I’m afraid we don’t know, Danny,” Maddie said.  “The doctors didn’t let us in to see Vlad when he had his accident and Vlad hasn’t spoken to us in years.”  Maddie kept her eyes on Danny with her goggles, trying to think of what they should do.

“Maybe we could call Vlad, ask him for some help since he’s the only one out there who’s got experience with this first hand,” Jack suggested.  “The doctors who worked on him got sent to mental asylums a short while after he got out.”

“If you guys had a falling out with Vlad then he might not be the best person to contact about Danny,” Jazz said, tapping her forearm in thought.  “He might release it to the press that we found out Danny has some rare radiation poisoning or mutation without telling the doctors if he’s particularly bitter.  And considering how enthusiastic Dad is about maintaining friendships - I think you might’ve actually hurt Dr. Saturday’s hand with your handshake - he’s gotta be bitter not to have spoken with you in, how long?”

“We can’t just do _nothing_ Jazz,” Danny half shouted.  “What if I sink through my bed and turn solid again in the middle of the floor?”

“Then you’d be catapulted either up or down, son,” Jack placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder.  “Matter can’t share space so the instant you were solid again, you’d be on either side of the wall or floor and everything follows the path of least resistance so whichever direction has more of you going that way is the one you’ll be going.”  Jack rubbed the back of his head. “At least you’ll probably land in another bed!”

“There weren’t any reports of a ghostly college student coming out of the hospital once Vlad was released, and he wasn’t the most subtle of people we knew,” Maddie said.  “Maybe this is a temporary side effect.” Maddie moved until she was sat down on the bed in front of Danny, with Jack and Jazz at her side. “In case Jazz is right, we going to wait until you get home.  If these symptoms stop by then, we’ll keep this to ourselves and run a few tests. If it continues, though, we’re going to call Vlad and ask him if he remembers anything from his incident with the protoportal and the following weeks in the hospital.”  Maddie turned to face all of her family. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” everyone said, and Jack and Jazz pulled up chairs to Danny’s bed.  Jazz looked down at her watch for a long moment before looking up to see her father stifling a yawn.  “You guys have been awake all night, I can tell. You two head home and get some sleep, I’ll stay here with Danny and watch out for any flare ups of ghostly activity.”

“Jazz, we can handle sitting down and watching our kids easily enough,” Maddie said.  “We’ve pulled all nighter’s before, you know.”

“Yes,” Danny said, nodding with a dry smile.  “You’re both at least half as aware of things after those all nighter’s afterward.  It once took you three whole minutes to notice I was balancing books on my head at breakfast, and Dad didn’t realize we had changed the positions of his fork and knife every time he looked away until the end of that same breakfast.”  Jack let out a yawn and Danny pointed at him. “See? Proof you both need to go home and sleep. I already did the sleeping part of that, so I’m fine-ish.”

After a good ten minutes of badgering from Danny and Jazz about it, and a yawn from Maddie, the Drs. Fenton left to head back home and get some proper rest while Danny got up and grabbed his notebook and pencil.  “Drawing more constellations?” Jazz asked, tapping the cover of her psychology book  Coping with Near Death Experiences .

“Nah, I had a few weird dreams last night and I thought I might try sketching stuff from that.”  Wild flowers and vines were soon covering the page, and the room fell into a somewhat comfortable silence.

* * *

 

If Sam ever needed an example to her friends of how ridiculously detached from the rest of the population of the world her parents were, Sam would simply reference her grounding over the summer.  Grounded hardly described the punishment, in her opinion. No access to the indoor theater, no jet, no bowling, etcetera. She was still allowed her laptop and wifi, however, and access to her greenhouse and garden.  “If there was ever a weirdness in my parents not to complain about, I’d have to say that this is it.” Sam sat on her bed in the lotus position, flipping through the pages of one of her favorite occult ritual books. No punishment that her parents could give her, however, could match up to the guilt that Sam felt over Danny.  “He’s alive though,” Sam muttered to herself. “Danny’s alive and recovering in the hospital. Not much I can do to help him from here.” Turning to the next page, Sam’s eyes widened a tad and a grin graced her lips. “But there is _something_.”

Sam gathered up four candles from around the house, thankful that her parents didn’t question why she had bought them all, and the usual indoor fire safety stuff.  She set each candle around her in the four cardinal directions. A blue, black, grey and orange candle surrounded her, and Sam sat in the center with a match in hand.  “This is Danny Fenton, Danny Fenton in all things,” she said while lighting the blue candle. She lit the black one, saying, “This is all the bad luck that has dragged Danny’s footsteps.  Trouble, disappointments, and tears are here. This bad luck now leaves Danny forever.” The room darkened despite the fires and Sam lit the grey candle. “All that bad luck is neutralized.  All Danny Fenton’s bad luck is dissolved.” Finally, the orange candle was lit, the darkness of the room choking out the sunlight from her balcony more and more. “This is the energy coming Danny’s way, to get Danny’s life moving and speed up the change.”

As always with one of her rituals, Sam focused on visualizations of everything she wanted to go right with it.  Bad luck trailing from the black to the grey and vanishing while good energy came to the orange light and filled the circle.  What Sam didn’t expect, however, was for the candle flames to all change. Danny’s candle was now lit up with a green fire, while the black candle’s flame was more like smoke that danced in imitation of a fire.  That blackness flowed toward the grey wick and was steadily burned away into no more than waves of heat, and the brightest of the flames was the orange one.

Even in the center of all that heat, Sam shivered and rubbed goosebumps off of her arms.  “Whoa. This is… new.” Sam stood up and stepped over the green flame, heading to the balcony.  Once in the sunlight, she could see wisps of heatless smoke curling away from her fingertips. “The portal must’ve made my magick stronger.”  After a moment of leaning against the rail and letting the rays warm her skin back up, Sam grinned. “Guess something good did come from the portal opening.”

* * *

 

_A piercing wail of discomfort filled his ears, but the more it hurt, the louder and worse it got.  His eyes opened, and all was bright. His eyes stung. The wailing grew louder. There was warmth, a caress that was gentle in a way that even lovers could not know.  A soothing, steady thrumming filled his hearing and blocked out the sound of his own cries. Flailing limbs stilled, and the weeping became soft wet gasps, the shimmering green air filling his lungs up more than he needed it to._

_Once he had a handle on breathing, he opened his eyes once more.  The air was still iridescent, and it hurt to see, but as the feeling registered, the light dimmed.  He saw, in the light cast only by their own bodies, a group of faces. First was blue, haloed by violet and scored by crimson eyes and purple lips radiant with loving warmth._

_He saw an ageless face covered in blue skin that could not settle between wrinkles of laughter and frowns or the smoothness of his own new skin.  Fuzzy patches of white grew into a well-trimmed beard before regressing, hair that took all lengths and styles, red eyes with electric blue dots in the center.  He felt coolness and attentiveness, the gaze of one who would never be away from him._

_He saw teal skin and violet eyes sharp with cold certainty, framed by a curtain of indigo adorned by black metal.  There was cold, prudence, protectiveness, a surety that few could boast._

_The air smelled of rust and smoke, of copper and dust, of ozone and leather.  He let out a new sound, withdrawn and shaky. It brought light to the faces around him, so he made the noise again.  Louder, stronger, and full of the new feelings that they brought him. It was happiness and joy, love and excitement, comfort and enthusiasm.  He was alive. It felt good to be alive._

_A voice whispered then, at the edge of his new consciousness.  It washed over him like liquid silk, misty smoke, falling snow.  It was a vibration that swept over his mind more gently than his own mother held him.  '_ **_Welcome to the world, little one.  I shall protect you, and keep you safe.  Bad things might happen, but I promise that you shall not fade.  I will keep you safe._ ** _'_

_He was safe, he was warm, he was loved.  In the arms of his mother, wrapped in the scent of woodsmoke and lulled by the thrumming of her core that accompanied him in the womb, his eyes fell closed._

 

Danny startled awake when he felt something prodding his side.  “Wha? What’s happening? Who’s poking me this time?” He turned his head to look around the room and saw Jazz, giggling in her chair.  “Why did you poke me, Spazz?”

“Because, Armstrong,” Jazz said with a grin, “You were starting to drool, and I don’t think you wanna do that over your fresh new drawings.”  She gently pulled the pad away without looking at it. “Plus, you shouldn’t sleep sitting up, it’s bad for your back.”

Danny shook his head with a smile, and wiped the drool from his lips.  “Thanks Jazz, though I’m not done with that.” He leaned forward to grab his notepad and flipped to a new page.  “I got even more weird dreams to draw out, and yes, you can see em and analyze all you want after I finish, Spazz.”

Jazz raised a brow at that, and leaned over to press a kiss to Danny’s head, laughing when he swatted her away half heartedly.


	5. Jokes, Tests, and Chores

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY DANNYVERSARY! You get an early chapter update

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Danno is glad as fuck to get outta the hospital, Danno is a dork, and Danno must take tests and do chores.

Danny waved goodbye to the hospital on his way out, beaming.  “Finally, I can sleep in my own bed and look at the stars with a telescope instead of through all the light pollution.’  Danny’s leg started bouncing as soon as he was in the seat of the family van. After a pointed look from Jazz to his left, Danny strapped the seatbelt into place.  “Even you can’t dull my sparkle, Jazz. I never thought I’d be eager to walk around after only like, two days of laying around.”

Maddie reached into her purse and handed a rubix cube to Danny before starting the van up.  “I’m happy to have you out of there too baby, but you’re not out of the woods yet.” She drove away from the hospital and rolled down the windows.  “You were just floating in your seat, which means you’ve still got ectoplasm in your system. When we get home we’ll run some tests and see what exactly we can find out about your condition.”

Danny twisted the cube around several times, setting it up to have one side form a t cross.  “Alright, so I float when I’m excited,” Danny said, “I can work with that. Shouldn’t be too hard to remember to stick to the rules of gravity - even for someone as lightweight as me.”  Jazz chuckled next to him and Danny looked up from his cube to smile at the rear view mirror he knew his mom was looking into. “We’ll figure it out, just like we always do. Even if it takes a competition between me and Spazz to see how we can one up you guys and each other that I end up winning.”

“I’m sorry,” Jazz said with a smile, “Who designed the latest model of the Gravity Inverters ™?”  Danny rolled his eyes and gave Jazz a light shove.

“Definitely not the same person who figured out how to minimize the recoil on the plasma pistols,” Danny said.  “Or the nav gear in the probes.”

“Kids,” Maddie said, “please stop.  Not everything is a competition. Besides, if we want to be accurate we should take a look at the count Jack and I have been keeping.”  Danny laughed and tossed his solved cube up in the air. “Only a minute Danny? That’s a new record for you isn’t it?”

“Guess I just have to stop paying attention to get anything done,” Danny said.  “I mean, that got us a doorway into the afterlife. Wonder what other amazing scientific discoveries I can make if I shut my brain down for a while.”  Danny scrambled the cube again and leaned back. No one laughed at his joke, but that was ok. He thought it was funny anyway.

 

When they got home, Danny got out of the car and stretched, taking in a deep breath of air.  “Home sweet home, how I missed the unsanitized air,” Danny said. He ran inside and flopped onto the carpet, rolling out of the way when his sister tried to pick him up.  “No no, let me embrace the house Jazz.”

“Danny you need to get up,” Jazz said, trying to hold back a laugh Danny could still hear in her voice.  “We’ve got serious stuff to do.”

“I am one with the carpeting of the house, Jazz,” Danny said as he rolled to the stairs.  “I cannot be moved from it to the cold cold tiles of linoleum in the kitchen, let alone the steel of the lab.”  Jazz started laughing and so did Danny, wiggling his way up a step. “I shall now ascend to my hedonistic sloth chambers above.”  Even their parents were laughing now, and Danny grinned up at everyone. “See, I told you I could lift any mood, Spazz, it’s not hard.”  Danny stood and headed up the stairs. “I’ll get in my hazmat and-”

“Actually Danny,’ his mom said, “You’ll have to be in the gowns again.”

Danny pouted but his dad added, “Ya can’t get accurate scans through denim and cotton Danno, you know that.”  Bested by logic once again, Danny sighed and pointed at Jazz.

“You can’t be there during the naked tests then,” Danny said, sliding down the rail of the stairs.  “I have my limits, and you being in the same room as me when one of us doesn’t have clothes on is the limit.”

“Oh my gods,” Jazz cried, shuddering.  “I wasn’t going to be part of the testing anyway, Danny!”  Jazz rolled her eyes. “I have books to read and exercise to do.”  Danny made a gagging noise at the prospect of exercise and studying, laughing when Jazz gave him a quick noogie and headed up the stairs herself.  “You could use a little exercise yourself Danny, you have to be physically fit to get into the astronaut program.”

“I know that, Spazz!”  Danny groaned and headed past the kitchen into the garage after his dad.  “I just need to eat some more first so I can beef up. ‘Sides, I think my health test here isn’t gonna be helped out by a jog.”  He looked up at his father with a tilt of his head, adding a quick, “Is it?” Danny hadn’t paid much attention when his parents went on rants about the possible biology of ghosts, or how ectoplasm affects the body after a certain amount of time.  There was a whole load of facts they didn’t have on the Netherworld, and even more that Danny himself didn’t.

“True,” Dad said, “but it probably wouldn’t hurt either.  Your sister is just tryna look out for you Danno, like we all are.”  Danny’s shoulder slumped with the thought of how much stress his parents had to be feeling right now, and his smile was less easy to keep up.  They all piled into the elevator and his dad called out, “Three to lab 11.” The glass doors slid shut with a hiss and Danny grabbed onto his dad to weigh him down a bit more, feet leaving the ground when the elevator rushed downward.

“We’ll have to coat your bed in something phase proof,” Mom said, putting a hand of her own on his shoulder.  “Don’t want you falling through the bed in your sleep. I wonder how this will affect your sleep walking,” she said, and Danny bristled up.

“I don’t sleep walk anymore,” Danny said.  “It’s been months since I had an incident.”

“Actually you sleep walked just last weekend,” Mom said, smiling at Danny’s rightful indignation. “I just forgot to tell you while we were working on the portal.  That’s why we locked the lab door until it was finished.” Traitors, they were supposed to tell him when he did that. “It’s not something that you just grow out of, Danny.”

“I will figure out how to stop sleepwalking,” Danny said.  “I’m tired of waking up with stray puppies that you won’t let me adopt.”  Danny punctuated that statement with an accusing pout toward both his parents.  His mother wasn’t looking impressed in the slightest.

“Perhaps if you could prove yourself responsible enough,” Mom said, “We might let you adopt a pet.  You’ve proven quite the opposite of yourself young man, so I wouldn’t expect a dog in your near future.”  Shit, she had him there. Danny slumped his shoulders and stuffed his hands in his pockets when the elevator finally stopped.  “Alright,” Mom said, “time for an extra check up.”

“No worries son,” Dad said with a clap to Danny’s shoulder, pushing him gently forward.  “I’m sure you’re as healthy as a racehorse.” The report Sam did on the cruelty of putting down horses whenever they got injured drifted to the front of Danny’s head and the teen’s slumping against his dad got worse.   _ They’ll never do that to me at least _ he thought  _ I’m their son, not a pet bred for money. _  Into the medical lab Danny went, hoping to find nothing alarming.

 

Most of the tests would take some time to finish up as Danny’s parents needed to analyze his spit, hair, blood and other extractable bodily components for any data matching up with what little they knew conclusively about ghosts.  The first of the machines that Danny recognized that he was placed in for scans was an MRI, and the teen took a moment to ask after the first five minutes of boredom. “Why do you guys have this?”

“In case we need to check one of you over for a concussion or brain injury,” Dad said as though it were the most obvious reason in the world.  “It wasn’t hard to build after looking at the blueprints for the most used ones.”

“Is ...is it legal to have this down here at all?”  Danny normally wouldn’t care enough about the law to ask such a question - after all his parents’ ambition was basically scienced up necromancy so the laws of nature were being ignored as much as possible - but this was some serious stuff and he was sure that Tucker or Sam or Jazz mentioned licenses being needed for handling medical equipment.  “Like, are you licensed for this?”

“Of course I am Danny,” Mom said.  “I renew my license in about 10 different medical professions every three years.  We wouldn’t use something on you that we know would hurt you.” Key word being  _ knew _ would hurt him.  Straying from that train wreck fo a thought track, Danny searched for something else to fill the time.  /He chose describing his dream as best as he could for that topic, and when he finished the only sound he could make out was the noise from the MRI machine.

“That sounds an awful lot like you were remembering being born to blue skinned parents, Danny,” Dad said finally.  “Anything else strange that you dreamed up?”

“Well, there was the dream of flying through green skies around purple castles and weird blue indigo and purple plant life,” Danny said.  “Nothing significant comes to mind from that one except being dragged down by red vine cable things. I remember that cause I drew it but other than that nothing.”  More buzzing, and a strange tingle in the center of his chest that was creeping slowly outward like the roots of a plant, frost covering a river system or maybe arcs of lightning across the sky.  The tingle traced whimsical patterns around his body, stretching outward to the very tips of his toes and fingers while causing an itch in the back of his skull that he couldn't scratch even if it wouldn’t disrupt the MRI.  “I feel tingly and itchy, by the way. Ectoplasm is reactive to electromagnetic fields, right?”

“It reacts more to electrical currents,” Mom said.  “It’s hardly as magnetic as cobalt dear. Can you describe the castle in your dreams anymore sweetie?”  Danny ended up passing the time by giving his parents every little detail he could on the strange dreams he had, details he tucked away for later to draw out.

After that Danny got to stretch himself out and walk around the lab, looking at the various machines testing his blood and such.  He didn’t fully understand it all but he asked as many questions as he could and his parents answered with varying levels of eagerness.  The closer he got to the possibility that he was going to die of ectoplasm poisoning, the less they revealed about the test being run. Avoiding that possibility wasn’t all that hard.

The next scanner had Danny laying back down on a metal examination table, and a mechanical arm giving off a soft green light moved down his body from head to toe and back.  Danny opted out of questioning the legality of equipment like that - a futile exercise since his parents’ field was so broad reaching and undiscovered that there weren’t any laws about ectoplasm handling in the first place - and instead started talking about the stars.  “Did you know that here in the Americas the Pliades were used to keep track of when to plant crops and when to harvest them? Or that the Big Dipper was viewed as a bear and three hunters? Or that stars have been used for calendar making for thousands of years world wide?”

“What kinda ship would we need to get a person to Mars, Danny?”  Dad asked, steering Danny entirely off the course had planned and onto one of numbers and materials he’d thought of passingly more times than he could count before.

Getting a check up from his parents wasn’t nearly as boring or tedious as Danny had guessed it was going to be.  He barely noticed when they were done. “So, the results will be ready… when?”

“In a couple hours sweetie,” Mom said while Danny changed into the spare clothes they kept for him down there.  “For now let's head upstairs.” Danny took the time to ponder the possibility of mermaids on one of Jupiter’s moons, which his parents were happy to debate with him about.  They didn’t know what conditions brought about life but they can still theorize it happened elsewhere in the universe, and the mermaids would look nothing like what ancient man imagined. The debate ended just as soon as the elevator ride did, however, when Mom pulled out her I Remember What You Did voice.  “After two whole days of inactivity I’m sure you’re eager to do something,” Mom said. “So I’m sure you’ll get your fill of activity from cleaning the kitchen, tidying the livingroom and cleaning up your room.”

In response to Danny’s mutinous groaning, Dad patted his back and guided him into the kitchen.  “You can take the time you’re using to work to think about new constellations you can draw out,” Dad said, “or maybe the ones you’d see from Mars!  If you need us, yell!” And the basement door was then closed and locked, Danny alone in the kitchen to deal with his punishment. Danny let out the loudest, longest groan he could manage, impressed with himself once he took a breath.

Danny grabbed up all the dishes that needed cleaning and set them aside, along with the spray bottles for the table and counters.  Once everything was assembled, Danny stared at the sink and hummed. “I can load some of this into the dishwasher, and then handwash the rest.”  Danny slumped against the table. “Why’d we have to make dinner together for the weekend? It always makes such a mess.” A glance to the lab door and Danny’s mouth formed a near perfect O.  “They didn’t say I couldn’t listen to music while I worked,” Danny whispered to himself, before bolting up the stairs, taking two at a time easily. Armed with his mp3 player, Rise Against’s latest album, headphones, and some rubber gloves, Danny set about his tasks as quickly and efficiently as he could.

Once the drying rack was full and the counters, table and even chairs were all sprayed and wiped down with cleaning solution that his parents had made, Danny was stuck in the boring period of waiting to dry that all cleaning chores ended up featuring.  Danny looked down at his hand, and then at the dishes in the drying rack. “Alright, I’m still ghostly enough to float without noticing, so what if I can make it work for me?” Danny took off his glove and grabbed one of the plates. He didn’t pick it up, not wanting to sweep up any shards, and concentrated.  “If it’s 4D movement of my 3D self, I can move other stuff with me, right?” Danny wracked his brains for the feeling that he had experienced yesterday and the night before and tried to do to the plate what he had done to his sheets.

The strange tingle from the MRI crept back into his chest and down his arm carrying with it a cold unlike ice.  Heat vanished in the wake of the tingling as though it hadn’t ever been there to begin with and Danny latched onto the feeling with all of his attention.  The most startling and strange part was when he felt - felt and saw - himself slip out of his fingers into the ceramic  _ cold empty hot bright with billions of tiny lights that are all too far away and too cold _ with a strange shimmer of the air covering the plate.  Danny flinched hard, pulling back into himself and yanking his hand through the plate and the rack as though neither were real.  His hand flickered from sight and he lifted it up to his face.

Danny shook the tingles out of his hand and watched as his bones appeared to be sprouting from the arm hole of his shirt.  Soon the muscle and sinew followed the journey back to visibility and once Danny could feel warmth in his hand it was covered in pale scar covered skin again.  “Holy Hel,” Danny said. “Ok, that was freaky but it was progress.” Danny grabbed the plate again and called back up the half numbing tingles. “This time don’t flinch,” Danny told himself as he once again reached out into the ceramic.  “It’s what you want to happen.” In the end it took Danny three more tries before he could hold onto the feeling and not recoil at the  _ wrong wrong utterly wrong _ feeling of inhabiting anything more than his own body.  “Now for the really interesting part,” Danny muttered. “There’s more than just three directions to go, and I can move in more ways now.  All I gotta do is…” Danny pulled himself and the plate away, but they stayed in the same spot. The plate and his arm became translucent and all moisture fell through them both.  Checking with his other hand that his arm and the plate were once again solid, Danny put it away and grinned. “Well, this just got a whole lot easier.”

 

Twenty minutes later, Danny heard a scream of his name and was startled so bad he went solid in the middle of the couch and shot out feet first on a collision course with his dad.  “Mom, Dad, don’t scare me like that!” Danny groaned when he realized that not everything stuck with him on the trip out from the couch. “Great,” Danny said, staring at the shirt sticking out of the couch’s back.  “That’s.. That’s great. At least we know what happens when I return to tangibility inside of something solid.” Dad lifted Danny up as he rambled and checked him over for any new scars. “I much prefer this less grizzly conclusion.”

“You seem a bit more… comfortable with your condition,” Dad finally said after the pair were sure that Danny wasn’t missing any organs.  “That’s actually really cool Danno! How did -”

“Boredom and time,” Danny said.  “I say boredom is the father of creativity and discovery.”  Danny reached over and tugged his shirt free from the couch, a smile on his face.  “I was looking under the couch to see if there was anything I forgot to grab under there.  It’s not dirty persay just… Tucker has lost a lot of screwdrivers at this house and I only just realized it.” 

Mom and Dad were staring at him as he pulled his shirt back on by pulling the front through himself until it fit just right.  Danny smiled and his mom shook her head with a smile of her own. “Alright show off, I’m proud of you for making the best of the situation and making some use of your condition.  But be a bit more careful with any tests you make of this in the future,” Mom warned. “I don’t want you floating off into space because you tried to fly without learning how to land.”

“On the other hand,” Danny said, “I could phase through the ground and then pop right back out of it and land perfectly on the ground if I suddenly stopped flying outside.”  Danny stared up at the ceiling, wondering what kind of fun visuals and videos he and Tucker could get and make with that kind of ability.

“Daniel James Fenton,” Mom said, causing Danny to stand up straight and look anywhere but her eyes.  “Don’t you  _ dare _ go trying something as reckless as diving from the sky to trampoline through the ground!”

“If you want to practice your levitation,” Dad added, “We can find my old trampoline and put it inside.”  Danny stared at his dad for a good three seconds. Then he started laughing.

The idea was so sensible and mundane that it simply couldn’t have come from Jack Fenton of all people.  Still, Danny couldn’t say he was against the idea. “Sure dad, sure,” Danny said once he regained his breath.  “That’s a great idea - but later! First I gotta tell you what all this feels like, cause I know you’re both dying to find out.”  Danny grinned when his parents groaned at his pun, and launched into his description.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions? Thoughts? Comments? Also, happy Dannyversary, it's been a proud 14 years! Happy 28th birthday Danny James Fenton/Phantom

**Author's Note:**

> So, thoughts, feelings, comments?


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